"Lost" Producers' Partnership In Limbo - For Now

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The last, lingering mystery of “Lost”: What will become of Team Darlton?

No, that’s not some obscure splinter group of the Dharma Initiative on a episode you forgot to DVR: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the executive producers of television’s most enigmatic series, worked so closely together on the series that they became known by the Brangelina-esque moniker “Darlton.” Now, their symbiotic small-screen partnership lingers in island-like limbo.

“I hope we'll find something else to do together,” Cuse, who hasn’t unveiled any future projects just yet, told PopcornBiz. “I think after six years of working together, we kinda wanted to do some stuff on our own. But I hope we circle back around. It's still been a very short amount of time since the show ended, really.”

“Yeah, this incredible group of people all came together to do 'Lost' and I think we need to sort of rub the slate clean, explore around a little bit before everybody starts to reassemble again,” added Lindelof, who still working with the show’s executive producer J.J. Abrams as one of the screenwriters of the “Star Trek” sequel. “And I'm looking forward to that because I really loved everybody I worked with.”

That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a little separation anxiety since “Lost” came to a close.

“It is a little bit weird, but it's also a relief, the idea that it's finished. I think we all miss each other a lot more than we miss the actual show, because we worked so hard to end it,” said Lindelof.

“Damon and I were hanging out on the Disney lot the other week, just kinda shooting the breeze,” added Cuse, “and there was this kind of thing in the back of my head that says, 'No, we have to quit bullshitting and go actually break an episode of the show,' because it's the Pavlovian conditioning. But we didn't actually have to break an episode of the show.”

The duo also think it’ll be a good long while – if ever – before they sit down to watch their iconic TV show from start to finish.

“Maybe,” said Cuse. “It's not anything I've really thought about doing myself. But I do find that after I've worked on something, there's kind of a five-year window. And after that I have amnesia about all the problems that went into making it and so I can watch it without the critical producer's eye. I can watch it really more as a fan.”

“Even in the last season we would go back and watch episodes from the first season just to check them as a reference point and it was so weird,” said Lindelof. “It did feel like it had been made by somebody else. So I think that maybe in the same what that you look at photographs, you know, a sense of nostalgia will kick in, but I'm trying to live in present time.”

Published at 6:17 AM CDT on Nov 1, 2010 | Updated at 1:45 PM CDT on May 30, 2012